A few yards short

Is the National Football League ready to admit women to the club? It doesn’t look that way. Lauren Silberman won the opportunity to try out as a kicker but, as USA Today chronicles it:

Lauren Silberman’s bid to make the NFL consisted of two kickoffs totaling 30 yards, an aggravation of a quadriceps injury she said she initially suffered in training last week and a whole lot of wondering whether the entire thing was a promotional sham.

Nice try, I guess. The reality is biology blesses a small minority of men with the ability to play football at a level no woman can attain; most men and virtually all women (there may be exceptions; the fact none has come forward doesn’t render such accomplishments impossible) are blessed with skill sets that do not lend themselves to the game of football. (Many Americans, myself included, believe this applies to military combat as well.) This is not a matter of superiority or inferiority or discrimination. It’s just the way it is.

The Silberman fiasco brought back the memory of 55-year-old Bobby Riggs winning a tennis match with Margaret Court, then one of the top women players, in 1973. Riggs subsequently wasn’t able to beat the best woman player of the time, Billie Jean King, however.

A lot of people drew a lot of conclusions about the Riggs affair; to me, it was never about more than money. He, Court and King no doubt made piles of it playing their war-of-the-sexes game, and more power to them for their entrepreneurship.